Hope

This chapter details how another youth arose during the era of the pogroms. Not the youth of some bygone, pre-modern time to which Pauline Wengeroff supposedly harked back but an ‘enlightened’ youth who nonetheless, in her words, had not gone ‘astray to the alien in that dark time’. Among them were many who found their way back to the Jewish people and who, under the influence of recent events, closed ranks. Indeed, as a reaction to antisemitism, ‘the Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) society arose’. It is to this youth that Wengeroff says she relates — for the first time — the ‘dreadful event’ of her sons' conversion, something she had not previously shared even with her intimates. These are Wengeroff's grandchildren, for whom Memoirs of a Grandmother is written. It is clear from Memoirs, that Wengeroff was a Zionist. One effectively sees in her work the emergence of full-fledged political Zionism from traditional proto-Zionism. The chapter then assesses how Wengeroff was able to write and publish Memoirs. What made the difference for Wengeroff, who must be counted a stunning success story in the history of Jewish women's writing, and of Jewish literature altogether? The chapter also looks at how her memoirs were received by her metaphorical grandchildren.

A Biography of a Person and a Book

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Pauline Wengeroff and her Memoirs of a Grandmother: Scenes from the Cultural History of the Jews of Russia in the Nineteenth Century. Wengeroff's two volumes are extraordinary on many grounds. As their full title proclaims, she writes the history of an era in Jewish experience, coupling her story and that of her family with that of Russian Jewry in the time of its transition from tradition to modernity. In Memoirs, Wengeroff gives a rich depiction of traditional Jewish society in Russia with a particular focus on the religious practices and piety of women. She tells a dramatic tale of the dissolution of traditionalism in this society from the perspective of women, marriage, and families. Indeed, she argues for the cultural power of women, though not as a feminist. Focusing on Wengeroff's adolescent and adult life, this book traces how Memoirs of a Grandmother came to be in the form in which it is found.

Wengeroff in America

This chapter addresses Pauline Wengeroff's strange tale about her brother Ephraim, who had converted to Christianity while in the United States and then reverted to Judaism during a family conclave in Germany under the agonized plea of their aged mother. After the death of their mother, who had made Ephraim swear not to return to the United States as long as she lived, he returned there. In fact, Ephraim returned to Christianity, too, and more, to proselytizing Jews. Ephraim played a large role in the near-publication of Memoirs of Grandmother in America: first, in translating both volumes into English from the predominant German in which they had appeared; in helping to identify potential publishers and in shopping the volumes around; and then in sinking Wengeroff's promising prospects of having them published by the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) when its publication board learned the truth about him. Wengeroff, who was terrified of pogroms, wished very much to come to America; she also tried mightily to have her memoirs published there. She succeeded in neither goal. Yet in a real sense she did come to America because her attempt to get published there set off a remarkable exchange among American Jewry's most prominent leaders about Jewish boundary lines and the ‘right’ story of Jewish modernity for American Jewry.